During the Cretaceous period here on Earth, between 145.5 to 65.5 million years ago, carbon dioxide levels in Earth's atmosphere were over 1,000 parts per million. That's up from where they are now, which is about 400 parts per million, and from where they used to be two centuries ago, which was about 280 parts per million. This was the period of natural history dramatized in the "Jurassic Park" books and movies. The Earth did not have icecaps during the Cretaceous period of natural history.

Venus and Cretaceous-period Earth are examples of the relationship between higher pressures of atmospheric carbon dioxide and higher average temperatures. Svante Arrhenius predicted this relationship in 1896. Capitalist industry has added 50% to Earth's atmospheric carbon dioxide endowment, and so we are currently in the era which awaits feedback from that increased level of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

The reigning political and media “elite” is happy to keep capitalogenic global warming on the public margins until long past the last ecological tipping points are passed. They can be counted on them to fiddle and diddle through the species’ final, fossil-fueled flame-out. It is an existential necessity to create a new culture, media, and politics with the elementary natural and social intelligence required to properly prioritize the most pressing problems of our time.

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was pricier, and indeed the dinosaurs had to pay higher rates on their home loans. As the Britannica reports:

As a result of higher sea levels during the Late Cretaceous, marine waters inundated the continents, creating relatively shallow epicontinental seas in North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Australia. In addition, all continents shrank somewhat as their margins flooded. At its maximum, land covered only about 18 percent of Earth’s surface, compared with approximately 28 percent today.

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"Can't you see/ It all makes perfect sense/ Expressed in dollars and cents/ pounds, shillings, and pence" -- Roger Waters

Those same Cretaceous epicontinental seas gave the US it’s Great Plains oil supplies.

was pricier, and indeed the dinosaurs had to pay higher rates on their home loans. As the Britannica reports:

As a result of higher sea levels during the Late Cretaceous, marine waters inundated the continents, creating relatively shallow epicontinental seas in North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Australia. In addition, all continents shrank somewhat as their margins flooded. At its maximum, land covered only about 18 percent of Earth’s surface, compared with approximately 28 percent today.

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We can’t save the world by playing by the rules, because the rules have to be changed.
- Greta Thunberg

@Hawkfish
is that fossil fuels predate the Mesozoic -- which is why they call the period around 300 million years ago the "Carboniferous" period. Enormous forests of ferns and horsetails were buried underground, and became fossil fuels over the intervening time.

"The formation of oil takes a significant amount of time with oil beginning to form millions of years ago. 70% of oil deposits existing today were formed in the Mesozoic age (252 to 66 million years ago), 20% were formed in the Cenozoic age (65 million years ago), and only 10% were formed in the Paleozoic age (541 to 252 million years ago). This is likely because the Mesozoic age was marked by a tropical climate, with large amounts of plankton in the ocean.[2]

The formation of oil begins in warm, shallow oceans that were present on the Earth millions of years ago. In these oceans, extremely small dead organic matter - classified as plankton - falls to the floor of the ocean. This plankton consists of animals, called zooplankton, or plants, called phytoplankton. This material then lands on the ocean floor and mixes with inorganic material that enters the ocean by rivers. It is this sediment on the ocean floor that then forms oil over many years. The energy in oil initially comes from the Sun, and is energy from sunlight that is trapped in chemical form by dead plankton.[3]"

Oil was the ultimate carbon sink. Now we've released most of it in the last 100 years...

#1.1 is that fossil fuels predate the Mesozoic -- which is why they call the period around 300 million years ago the "Carboniferous" period. Enormous forests of ferns and horsetails were buried underground, and became fossil fuels over the intervening time.

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" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

@Cassiodorus
Unfortunately, there is much suppressed information demonstrating that oil is not a "fossil fuel" derived from organic matter, rather it is formed and continues to be formed inorganically, deep below the earth's surface and migrates upwards to fill rock chambers which are then drilled. I say "unfortunately," because I believe we need to get off of oil and petroleum products entirely and that it would be a good thing if we were running out of this allegedly "finite" resource.

Anyone remember the "Peak Oil" scare about twenty years ago? Funny how we haven't heard much about it since.

#1.1 is that fossil fuels predate the Mesozoic -- which is why they call the period around 300 million years ago the "Carboniferous" period. Enormous forests of ferns and horsetails were buried underground, and became fossil fuels over the intervening time.

#1.1.1 Unfortunately, there is much suppressed information demonstrating that oil is not a "fossil fuel" derived from organic matter, rather it is formed and continues to be formed inorganically, deep below the earth's surface and migrates upwards to fill rock chambers which are then drilled. I say "unfortunately," because I believe we need to get off of oil and petroleum products entirely and that it would be a good thing if we were running out of this allegedly "finite" resource.

Anyone remember the "Peak Oil" scare about twenty years ago? Funny how we haven't heard much about it since.

@OzoneTom
Well, obviously you did not read the linked article and the sources it relies on. The inorganic origin of oil is utterly uncontroversial and has been accepted as scientific fact in Russia for more than 60 years. There are volumes of published Russian research on this subject dating back to the 1950s and none of it has been translated into English. The linked article does cite one peer-reviewed and published article by an American scientist that explains all of this. It is the fossil/organic theory that is supported by almost no scientific evidence.

However, I do understand that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

@Bring Back Civics
the matter. It's freely bandied about. The problem is that there is very little evidence that it's true. Meanwhile, we have heard plenty about Peak Oil -- it's just that it's all implicit, in such imperial overstretching as the current attempt to seize Venezuela and its oil reserves on behalf of the Great American Empire.

Your phrasing reminded me of an "article" I read about 20 years ago, where the author said something along the lines of, "remember that whole big scare about radon a few years ago? funny how we don't ever hear about that ..." Of course the reason we "don't ever hear about it" is that mostly we no longer need to hear about it, because radon awareness and abatement/remediation is fully baked into our institutions of environmental safety and real estate transaction. Nonetheless, I believe it remains the second leading cause of lung cancer in the US.

#1.1.1 Unfortunately, there is much suppressed information demonstrating that oil is not a "fossil fuel" derived from organic matter, rather it is formed and continues to be formed inorganically, deep below the earth's surface and migrates upwards to fill rock chambers which are then drilled. I say "unfortunately," because I believe we need to get off of oil and petroleum products entirely and that it would be a good thing if we were running out of this allegedly "finite" resource.

Anyone remember the "Peak Oil" scare about twenty years ago? Funny how we haven't heard much about it since.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01, a Boeing 757 (AA Flight 77) flew into the Pentagon.
If you can't accept these indisputable facts, I can't fake an interest in your opinions about anything else.

was pricier, and indeed the dinosaurs had to pay higher rates on their home loans. As the Britannica reports:

As a result of higher sea levels during the Late Cretaceous, marine waters inundated the continents, creating relatively shallow epicontinental seas in North America, South America, Europe, Russia, Africa, and Australia. In addition, all continents shrank somewhat as their margins flooded. At its maximum, land covered only about 18 percent of Earth’s surface, compared with approximately 28 percent today.

@OzoneTom
And then they started saying giant bones were put here by Satan to test us.

When I was a kid, they (church folks) told me aquatic fossils on The Great Southern Plains, where I was born, were proof of the great flood of the bible. At 6-8 I was checking out dinosaur books from the library, but my dad wouldn't allow me to check out anything from the children's section. Everything the church was saying was certainly not backed up by those books. Disclaimer: to this day I can't pronounce the names, but I loved all the sketches of the ancient animals.

As an adult, I saw "What Happened to Kansas". Holy crap lol! Even my kid, maybe 12 or 13 said, "Wait. These people think that the world is six thousand years old, and dinosaurs are only that old too, and man and dinosaur . . .?" Yeppers lol.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01, a Boeing 757 (AA Flight 77) flew into the Pentagon.
If you can't accept these indisputable facts, I can't fake an interest in your opinions about anything else.

report on by my chemistry teacher. All I could find about this gifted man was that he was responsible for the theory of the dissociation of acids and bases. It was a very short report. Of course this was way back before the internet. Much more information is available now. Still, I think TPTB would like to suppress knowledge of his studies lest they give the 99% any ideas about how badly they’ve been screwing up the ecosystem.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

To break it down, the Sun is about half way through the most stable part of its life. Over the course of the past four billion years, during which time planet Earth and the entire Solar System was born, it has remained relatively unchanged. This will stay the case for another four billion years, at which point, it will have exhausted its supply of hydrogen fuel. When that happens, some pretty drastic things will take place!

Unless we find our way off this planet, we are doomed.

But Trump! Omar! AoC! Vladimir?!?

Phhhtff.

#6 At some point it will fail to sustain capital, and I guess we all have tickets to that theatrical performance.

To break it down, the Sun is about half way through the most stable part of its life. Over the course of the past four billion years, during which time planet Earth and the entire Solar System was born, it has remained relatively unchanged. This will stay the case for another four billion years, at which point, it will have exhausted its supply of hydrogen fuel. When that happens, some pretty drastic things will take place!

Unless we find our way off this planet, we are doomed.

But Trump! Omar! AoC! Vladimir?!?

Phhhtff.

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5 users have voted.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"